Extremely violent, often cinematic (no surprise given the author) story of a mentally impaired bagman's unfortunate love affair with the widow of a criminal. There's so much going on in this book, and it jumps from place to place and time to time so much it's a wonder it doesn't all fall apart by the end. But the events and the memorable characters, including one of the nastiest hitmen on record, will keep you reading until the end. And what an ending--not just the ending, but the after-ending. If you are looking for real noir, this is the deal. ( )

"Brainquake" is a story about one of the most unusual characters in hardboiled crime fiction: Paul, who has a cipher for a face, who doesn't like to talk much because his voice sounds like sandpaper, who has few friends, who lives in a small seemingly abandoned shack, and who has "brainquakes" or seizures where the whole world turns pink. Paul is also a bagman for the organization and races around town in his taxicab (his front so he can pretend to have a legitimate job) and makes pickups and drop-offs all over the five boroughs. He is trusted with sums of cash one can barely imagine carrying around. As a bagman, you have no friends, no lovers, no wife, no family. No one you would confide in. When you retire (if you make it that far), there is a special hotel where the retired bagmen live. Paul might not be suited for most jobs, but he is suited for this one. He picks the best routes around town, racing to escape the pirates who are always out there ready to grab the loot.

Paul likes to sit in the park on his days off and read poetry. While sitting in the park so engaged, Paul falls in love with "Ivory Face," who just happens to be a mobster's widow. What else can he call her when he doesn't know her name? He brings her flowers and poems and his whole world turns upside down when they have to flee with $10 million in a bag he was carrying at the time and with the police and the organization out to get them.

There are probably very few books with heroes like this one. This book is hardboiled crime with double-crosses and mistrust. It is a love story. It is a coming-of-age novel about a boy who grows into a man the hard way. The book is told in the third person, mostly through Paul's eyes and the reader feels his confusion when his brain starts to quake and the world falls apart. He feels it as a nutcracker squeezing his brain. He hears the music of a flute and "tidal wave of blood drown[s] his brain." The story also gets told through other people's eyes and the reader gets to know things that Paul doesn't.

It starts off in a bit of a confusing manner, but when there are bombs in baby carriages and gunshots echoing in the park, it is confusing to anyone sitting there, particularly one whose world collapses at times into pink.

It is written in a terrific prose, starting with the following line: "Sixty seconds before the baby shot its father, leaves fell lazily in Central Park." Within the next few paragraphs, the reader hears that Paul suffocated his mother with a pillow and that he has an appointment with a doctor who thinks he can cure Paul's brain. Wow! There's a lot of different things going on in just the start of this book and it will be a few pages before any of it makes sense. Patricide and matricide are just the start of things here.

There are lots of great characters here like the six-foot tall police woman who takes no nonsense from anyone and the boss who crosses her office "shining like the star of a Paris collection. Legs perfect, slim. The kind that would give Paris couture a blood transfusion." But, the key character is always Paul. He is a "cipher." His features are easily forgotten. Not a single distinctive quality that anyone could describe. And, his eyes were dead and expressionless.

It is a very enjoyable story and there are few stories like it anywhere in any genre. Hats off to Hard Case Crime for digging up this forgotten treasure. ( )

"Brainquake" is a story about one of the most unusual characters in hardboiled crime fiction: Paul, who has a cipher for a face, who doesn't like to talk much because his voice sounds like sandpaper, who has few friends, who lives in a small seemingly abandoned shack, and who has "brainquakes" or seizures where the whole world turns pink. Paul is also a bagman for the organization and races around town in his taxicab (his front so he can pretend to have a legitimate job) and makes pickups and drop-offs all over the five boroughs. He is trusted with sums of cash one can barely imagine carrying around. As a bagman, you have no friends, no lovers, no wife, no family. No one you would confide in. When you retire (if you make it that far), there is a special hotel where the retired bagmen live. Paul might not be suited for most jobs, but he is suited for this one. He picks the best routes around town, racing to escape the pirates who are always out there ready to grab the loot.
Paul likes to sit in the park on his days off and read poetry. While sitting in the park so engaged, Paul falls in love with "Ivory Face," who just happens to be a mobster's widow. What else can he call her when he doesn't know her name? He brings her flowers and poems and his whole world turns upside down when they have to flee with $10 million in a bag he was carrying at the time and with the police and the organization out to get them.

There are probably very few books with heroes like this one. This book is hardboiled crime with double-crosses and mistrust. It is a love story. It is a coming-of-age novel about a boy who grows into a man the hard way. The book is told in the third person, mostly through Paul's eyes and the reader feels his confusion when his brain starts to quake and the world falls apart. He feels it as a nutcracker squeezing his brain. He hears the music of a flute and "tidal wave of blood drown[s] his brain." The story also gets told through other people's eyes and the reader gets to know things that Paul doesn't.

It starts off in a bit of a confusing manner, but when there are bombs in baby carriages and gunshots echoing in the park, it is confusing to anyone sitting there, particularly one whose world collapses at times into pink.

It is written in a terrific prose, starting with the following line: "Sixty seconds before the baby shot its father, leaves fell lazily in Central Park." Within the next few paragraphs, the reader hears that Paul suffocated his mother with a pillow and that he has an appointment with a doctor who thinks he can cure Paul's brain. Wow! There's a lot of different things going on in just the start of this book and it will be a few pages before any of it makes sense. Patricide and matricide are just the start of things here.

There are lots of great characters here like the six-foot tall police woman who takes no nonsense from anyone and the boss who crosses her office "shining like the star of a Paris collection. Legs perfect, slim. The kind that would give Paris couture a blood transfusion." But, the key character is always Paul. He is a "cipher." His features are easily forgotten. Not a single distinctive quality that anyone could describe. And, his eyes were dead and expressionless.

It is a very enjoyable story and there are few stories like it anywhere in any genre. Hats off to Hard Case Crime for digging up this forgotten treasure. ( )

This lost novel by filmmaker Samuel Fuller is volume 116 from Hard Case Crime and is a fast-moving, densely plotted thriller full of great characters and strange turns. The story revolves around Paul Pope a silent, lonely nondescript mob bagman who goes about his work with a quiet unquestioning efficiency and loyalty. He also suffers from strange, debilitating brain seizures that he refers to as "brainquakes" in which the world turns a hallucinatory pink and the sound of flutes fills his ears. Despite that all is well in his world until he meets "Ivory Face", the beautiful widow of a murdered mobster. Infatuated Pope breaks the habit of a lifetime running off with the widow, her child and a bag filled with $10 million of the mob's money. The syndicate don’t take that lying down and sends their best contract killer, the deadly Father Flannigan after Pope and "Ivory Face". Unfortunately for the increasingly brainquake-prone Pope, his paramour "Ivory Face" may be playing her own twisted game. Samuel Fuller's films were known for their bold and stylistic intensity and his writing, if "Brainquake" is anything to go by, is equally bold and intense. He writes with great pace, the dialogue delivered in short, sharp exchanges. This cleverly builds a corrupt world of mobsters, enforcers, bosses, bagmen and bookies that thrums with sleazy back alley life. The action flows easily from one scene to the next, with the book characterised by a number of shocking, stand-out sequences – the execution of mob boss Rebecca possibly being the best and the most disturbing. Despite being a plot-driven book each of the main characters are highly memorable and beautifully developed, with detailed back stories that add depth and understanding to their motivations and their subsequent actions. We have Rebecca "The Boss" Plummer the mob chief who stays loyal to Pope against her own best interests; Lieutenant Helen Zara the black, beautiful and statuesque six-foot detective hot on the heels of the fugitives; Michelle "Ivory Face" Troy, the deadly widow playing her own wicked game and Paul Pope, the odd protagonist who barely has a life and who repeatedly falls into a mad world of shocking pink hallucination. The most singular character, however, is mob killer Father Flannigan, a man who can only see women naked and has a penchant for crucifying his victims. He's a brutal fascinating creation that gives every scene he appears in a bitter, creepy and frightening flavour. “Brainquake” then is a fast, non-stop, relentlessly brutal crime yarn that is peopled with a set of incredible, intense characters. Fuller tells the story with a lean and sure touch that makes it a wonder that the book went unpublished for so long. It is to Hard Case Crime and editor Charles Ardai that the novel has at last seen well-deserved publication. ( )